Blackhumouristpress's Blog

May 20, 2014

Incredible Ride to the Heart of Darkness

Filed under: Ethnicity,humor,Short Story — blackhumouristpress @ 6:14 am
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Dr. Thompson and his wife Dr. Thompson loved to go to a local restaurant where a man by the name of Woody played piano trumpet and sang. Woody’s name came from Woodrow. Woody’s dad was a Woodrow and so was his grandfather who was named after an old white president. Woody chose the military over jail and joined the top Army band. After six years in the military, Woody was sequestered in a five star hotel in South Korea where he played piano, trumpet and sang. The Koreans loved that he looked and sounded a bit like Louie Armstrong. After several years of eating well, living well and fucking regularly exotic Korean women, Woody returned home to the west side of Chicago.
Now where Woody lived, houses were boarded up and beat up. Car radios thumped and people hung out on corners in front of liquor stores or currency exchanges. People sold drugs or their bodies. It was dismal as it was depressed and a part of Chicago that people never saw or never visited. It was almost like a township near the glimmering, shinning beacon on a hill that was Johannesburg back in the days of Apartheid. There is no mandated Apartheid in Chicago but rather a social and economic segregation that has not changed since the days of Martin Luther King. Woody knocked around bars and restaurants in nice suburban neighborhoods where well-to-do white people liked to know genuine authentic black people. It made for good conversation at liberal and white parties.
“I have a friend… An African-American gentleman who is one helluva performer. If you closed your eyes, you’d swear Satchmo was there in the room.”
The Drs. Thompson put a fifty dollar bill in Woody’s tip jar, bought him dinner and a few drinks and invited him to sit with them between sets. One thing lead to another and before long, it was decided that Woody would come to their home once a week for an hour and work with their son who was playing trumpet in the school Jazz band. The doctors felt their son was good but that he lacked soul and Woody had soul. Woody had pizzazz, style and swag. They wanted their boy to be more self confident and proud of his playing and they didn’t feel that would come from an old fat white man who hated kids and teaching. So it was decided that for $75.00 an hour, Woody would come to their home and work with their son.
Woody was amazed to find that a family of three, lived in a house as big as his twelve unit apartment building. The house was large among other large homes with large front yards and trim MILF looking trophy wives waving from large SUVs with stickers of their children’s sports activity stickers on the back windows. St. Fuckface Lacrosse, hockey, water polo and so forth. Woody walked into the living room to find a chubby teen wearing a collared shirt. He asked the kid to play. It sounded like a dying goose. Nate, the chubby teen was nervous.
“Do dat sound good to you?”
“Then why play it? Play something you know sound good.”
Nate thought for a moment and then played a pretty good version of Miles Davis’ So What.
“That ain’t bad… Now solo. Come up with ya own shit. Feel what goin on and lit it go.”
Nate was flat and farty sounding. Woody went up to the large bar off to the side of the living room and cracked open an unopened bottle of whiskey. It was something expensive and meant not to be opened from the Drs’ trip to Scotland. It just so happened that Nate’s parents were at their condo on the Dutch side of St. Maarten for a few days. Woody poured one for himself and one for Nate.
“Fuck music foh the moment. Let’s talk. Picture the finest piece of ass getting undressed foh y’all here while you sippin on some fine ass shit like this stuff. $20.00 a glass shit and some beautiful bitch got yo shit so motherfuckin hard, it hurt to keep yo shit in yo pants… You picture dat shit?”
“Yeah… I totally do.”
“Cool… Now pick up yo fucking horn and play dat shit like you was rubbing the legs and ass of dat fine bitch swaying and taking shit off while you sittin there.”
Nate played something smooth and tasteful without farts or bad notes. Woody smiled, shook his head up and down and poured himself and the kid another. Woody asked the Nate if he had ever played a live gig before. Nate claimed to have played a few high school recitals. Woody commanded his student to grab his horn that they were about to play together at a club on Chicago’s west side. Woody had a twenty-five dollar gig playing burlesque music at a bar on Cicero Avenue. Woody would keep all the money but give his student the gig.
The duo drove in Woody’s Cadillac convertible past the security of suburbia to something that looked like another country. Nate looked at young men standing around with blank looks on their faces, old men drunk out of their minds, staggering around laughing and talking to themselves and young women selling their bodies. It was a field trip like none other for Nate.
“You mean you pull up and they get in and you give them money and they…”
“And they give you head or fuck you til you cum. It a job foh dem…”
Nate and Woody walked into a dark place that had a sign out in front with a word he didn’t understand in French “Encroyable”.
“It French for incredible… The woman who own it toll me dat.”
Once inside, a movie played on a wall. The name of the movie was called, “Butt Pirates of the Caribbean”. There were good looking women bent over the side of a fake looking boat getting plugged in their rumps by good looking young men. There were several patrons drinking beer and watching the movie in the dark with blank expressions. The men were not neighborhood black men. They were white, middle and upper middle class men coming to see an underground event.
“Now imma play the piano… Simple assed Blues shit. Easy to follow. You jus play wat you feel while some shit happen here. You wanna make sure what you playin ain’t distracting nobody. It like when yo parents come to the restaurant. People want to focus on other shit and the music jus help… Here, take some mo this shit. It will keep you cool.”
Lights went on and a well built black woman who looked a little bit like Serena Williams danced around on top of the bar in high heals and a belt made of flint to a song called Chameleon by a band called Escort (it goes well with the story if you Youtube while reading). She picked up a power saw and sent sparks flying off of the belt around the room and off of her vagina as well as the white midget with a large penis who was waiting for her to lower herself onto him. A black man in a chicken suit gave each patron a shot of something on the house. The man’s head was exposed. The Chicken suit made no sense. Nate was drunk and overcome with so many odd things occurring at once. He blared on his horn and did things that sounded good and wild equally. As the woman rode the midget on top of the bar, Woody shouted out encouragement to his student.
“Dats the motherfucking shit, boy! Let it go! You doing it, boy! Dats how it’s did.”
Nate played what he saw and how it made him feel inside. Those in attendance would have never guessed that a high school junior from one of the richest suburbs in America was playing appropriate music to a live sex act in a bar.
A week later, Woody saw the parents of Nate, the good doctors. They were so excited to talk with Woody about their son’s transformation and awakening. They gave Woody an envelope full of hundred dollar bills and asked him what it took to bring their son to life. Woody smiled and cocked his head.
“Well… I toll him to look deep into his soul. Deep into the darkest part of his heart and then jus let it go… I think he know what I meant.”

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